


It's Enough (To Feel the Weight of Us)

by sequence_fairy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Minor Allura/Lance (Voltron), Space Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: Allura presses one hand to his forehead, the other to the centre of his chest, and closes her eyes. In the silence between the slowing beats of Hunk’s heart, Allura pulls the universe apart and drags him back through.Allura’s eyes fly open when Hunk gasps for air, heaving himself up to sitting, even with both Lance and Shiro’s hands pushing down on his shoulders. Allura slumps back, sliding from her knees onto her butt, hands shaking. The gaping maw of the abyss behind the veil plays in her mind’s eye. She blinks, forcing the afterimage away.“Allura,” Hunk says, then, with reverence, “Princess.”After Oriande, Allura's magic changes.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26
Collections: Allura Lives Zine





	It's Enough (To Feel the Weight of Us)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Allura Lives zine! So happy to be able to post this piece now that the zine has shipped. 
> 
> Long Live Allura!

After Oriande, Allura’s magic changes. The well in her core deepens, and her knowledge swells. Allura knows enough about the ancient rites to know that there will be a cost to using this further power, but she also knows that she won’t shy away from it when the time comes, because the universe will only take what it knows she can spare. Allura is confident in this, one certain truth in the face of this uncertain war.

Where it once was tranquil, now her magic shifts and seethes under her skin, constantly in motion. It is restless; needing an outlet, desiring a use. The opportunity presents itself in the worst possible way. Allura’s out of her lion before she’s even really made the choice to leave, flinging herself through space and into the mouth of the Red Lion. 

That first time, Allura doesn’t even think about what she’s doing or how she knows to do it. She leans into the magic, pulls the threads of the universe apart down to their atoms, and brings Lance back to life. The power swims in her veins, singing through every part of her, heady and intoxicating. Lance’s chest rises under the press of her hand, the swell of his renewed breath reverberating through every one of Allura’s cells. 

The cost is negligible, Allura decides, barely thinking about what she’s agreeing to, too concerned with tugging Lance’s helmet off so she can hear him breathing and see his eyes open. At first, they are blank and unseeing, but then he blinks, and she knows he can see her, because they soften, going liquid blue and so gentle. Allura wonders if he knows that she can read everything he feels in his eyes, and wonders if he would ever think to hide it. She hopes he never feels that he has to. 

There’s a metaphysical pinch deep inside her, but Allura ignores it, because they only have a moment, and she wants to bask in it. Lance’s gloved hand comes up to her cheek, and he’s looking a little star-struck and a lot in love. Allura allows herself to lean into his touch a little, closing her eyes. He’s breathing. She can feel it, under her palm; his chest rising and falling. The price is worth it, whatever it was. 

They have only this moment, stolen in the heat of battle, and it’s over before Allura can even sink into it. The Red Lion pitches and rolls, her internal inertia dampeners working overtime, but Allura is still thrown away from Lance. She stumbles back, hands outstretched behind her, catching on an auxiliary console and hanging on, until the lion rights herself. 

Hunk’s voice cracks as he demands to know what Lance is doing out there. 

“I’m coming,” Lance says, hands on the control arms of the lion. He throws a look over at Allura, and she nods. Lance hauls on the control arms, dragging the lion around in a tight turn, bounding through debris and coming to a skidding stop just next to Blue. 

“Thanks,” Allura says, and then she’s leaping down the shaft at the back of the cockpit. She doesn’t look back. 

The second time, it’s quieter; done with intention. And this time, Allura knows what she is paying for. Blood bubbles, wet and so very red, in the corner of Hunk’s mouth, his face going ashen even as they watch. Internal bleeding, Pidge had said, once they’d pulled him out from under the rock fall. Pidge’s voice had given out in a hoarse gasp when Hunk had groaned, unable to form words. 

Allura presses one hand to his forehead, the other to the centre of his chest, and closes her eyes. In the silence between the slowing beats of Hunk’s heart, Allura pulls the universe apart and drags him back through. 

Allura’s eyes fly open when Hunk gasps for air, heaving himself up to sitting, even with both Lance and Shiro’s hands pushing down on his shoulders. Allura slumps back, sliding from her knees onto her butt, hands shaking. The gaping maw of the abyss behind the veil plays in her mind’s eye. She blinks, forcing the afterimage away. 

“Allura,” Hunk says, then, with reverence, “Princess.” He’s looking at her, nearly the same way Lance looked at her when she pulled him back from beyond the veil. Allura nods, and leans in to wipe the blood from the corner of Hunk’s mouth with her thumb. Hunk shivers under her touch, but he doesn’t pull away.

Shiro’s already back on his feet. He reaches down for her, gloved hand sliding against Allura’s bare palm. There’s something questioning in his gaze, but Allura refuses to meet his eyes, unwilling to explain. Allura lets him pull her to her feet, and then he’s turning around, eyeing the sky. 

“We have to go,” Shiro says, and Allura nods. There’s the pinch in her soul again, and the feeling of something sliding out of her reach. Allura disregards it, turning instead to help Lance get Hunk back on his feet. 

They pick their way out of the crater, and back to the sand-skip they’d commandeered from the settlement. The Lions wait over the edge of the next rise. 

The third time, it’s in the heat of a fight, fierce and indelicate. Pidge comes back with a scream, and immediately flails. Allura catches Pidge’s hands in her own, and leans in close. “Quiet,” Allura orders, and Pidge falls silent, eyes wide. “We don’t have much time.” 

There’s a whine over their heads and then Allura is throwing herself over Pidge, a rain of gravel clattering over their armour. 

“Shit,” Pidge says, beneath Allura. Allura agrees. Another handful of years slide out of Allura’s reach, given to the universe in exchange for the life of her friend. She hasn’t ever explained what she’s giving up to bring them back, and she won’t, because she has millennia to spend and her friends have only decades. 

“Let’s go,” Allura says, pushing herself up off Pidge, and then to her feet. She reaches down and Pidge takes her hand, squeezing it before letting go. 

“Thanks, Allura,” Pidge says, the warmth in her voice obvious even across the scratchy commlink. Allura smiles. 

The fourth time, she carries Shiro’s soul into a body that is both his and not quite his at the same time. The cost is staggering, but the alternative is much worse, so Allura closes her eyes against the feeling of centuries evaporating. 

“Princess,” Lance says, and Allura opens her eyes. He’s reaching for her, like he knows, maybe, what she’s giving, every time she pulls one of them back. He can’t though, Allura is sure, because she hasn’t said anything, and she’s not going to. 

The fifth time, Keith collapses when they arrive back at the Atlas. The dark purple of the Blade uniform hiding the extent of his injuries. Allura skids to her knees beside him, hopeful she won’t have to pull him all the way back, but even as she touches him, she knows he’s going cold. 

Shiro lands next, dropping to his knees across from where Allura is kneeling next to Keith. He catches her eye, and Allura nods. She reaches inward, feels the well of power at her command. She sips delicately, because she’s practiced now, and all she needs to do is bring him back enough that an Olkari healer can do the rest. She reaches, parting the veil, and tugs Keith back with an iron grip around his wrist. 

“Not yet,” Allura tells Keith, the first time she’s spoken in this in-between place. Her voice is echoing and strange. Keith bares his teeth, like he wants to fight her, so Allura grabs on with her other hand and shoves him back inside himself. 

Keith comes to silently. His eyes fly open, and he shivers. Unerringly, he finds Allura next to him, her hand still planted on his chest. They share a long, meaningful look. Keith knows, Allura thinks, but then he’s always been sensitive to quintessence. 

“How many, Allura?” Keith rasps, voice ragged with pain. His ribs are still broken, all but the pair that had stabbed into his lung and left him drowning in his own blood. The jagged slice across his already scarred shoulder bleeds sluggishly. 

“How many what?” Shiro asks, looking up from Keith’s face for the first time since he got to Keith’s side. Allura shakes her head, a tight movement, economical. Keith’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t press her. 

Allura gets to her feet, wobbly like a fawn, and turns away. Every step she takes away from Keith and Shiro on the floor is more confident, until she is striding out of the hangar like the leader of an intergalactic coalition that she is. The door slides open, and Allura sweeps through, ignoring the Olkari who bustle in as she’s leaving. 

The door slides shut just as Allura leans back against the corridor wall. She’s still shaking, her body still humming with the thrill of power in her blood. She presses her hand to the centre of her chest, curling her fingers into a fist, feeling the steady beat of her heart under her skin and ribs, the swell of her breath in her own lungs. The magic ebbs, and Allura lets it go. 

Coran catches her there, and all of a sudden, Allura wants someone to know, someone to explain to her how she is able to do this and how the universe knows how many years it can take, and whether, some day, it will take them all. She says none of this though, instead explains that Keith was hurt, but that he’ll be okay, and lets Coran fuss around her, bundling her down the hall and into the cabin she’s been given. He insists, in his way, that she rest, and leaves her with the mice, sitting at the little desk, staring at her reflection in the mirror propped against the wall, hair tumbling in a white riot around her shoulders. She peers at herself, leaning in close to examine the skin around her eyes, wondering what it will be like to see crows feet there, wondering if she’s changing already, having given up so many years for everyone around her. 

She shakes her head, shaking away the thought and it’s attendant guilt, and goes to bed. 

Hours later, Lance bursts in, waking Allura from a dead slumber. He’s wild-eyed and his hair looks like he’s spent the last hour trying to tear it out of his own head, sticking up in every direction. 

“Lance?” Allura asks, voice still rough from sleep. She blinks, and pushes herself up to sitting, the mice tumbling out of the nest they made of her hair. 

“You–” Lance stops himself, chest heaving. Allura looks at him, takes in the tense line of his shoulders, and the fine tremor in his hands. 

“Oh,” she says, “I guess you know.” 

“How–Allura–what are you thinking? How is any of this–what are you  _ doing _ ?” 

“Only what I have to,” she says, reaching up to separate a section of her hair from the rest and pull it over her shoulder, carding her fingers through it to untangle the knots it gained while she slept. 

“Only what you have to,” Lance repeats. He pushes his hands through his hair, then scrubs one palm over his face, heaving out a sigh. 

“Your lives–” Allura begins, and Lance holds up a hand. 

“No,” he says, eyes serious. Allura sighs, letting her hair fall in a soft curl of moonlight against her front. She reaches for him. Lance steps close enough that she can take his hand. 

“You were the first,” she says, finally, when he’s sat down beside her, cross-legged on the bed. “I didn’t know I could until I’d already done it, and I never asked the price. I didn’t care, I still don’t. I have millennia to spend, Lance,” Allura says, matter-of-fact, turning his hand over in hers. “You don’t.” 

“You make it sound so simple,” Lance argues. He’s still tense, shoulders hitched up. Beneath her skin, Allura’s magic shimmers. She could help him with this, if she wanted, but she won’t, because it doesn’t seem right to ease him with the very magic he has come to make her explain. 

“It is,” Allura answers, looking up at him. His eyes are so blue, she thinks, like the ocean he’s taken her to see. He’s warm, alive, and she can feel the pulse of his heartbeat through the thin skin of his wrist. “Once I knew I could, how could I not?”

“How–how many?” 

“As many as it takes,” Allura answers, which is not the question Lance is asking, and they both know it. 

“Tell me,” Lance insists, so earnestly that Allura wants to tell him, but she can’t, because she doesn’t know. She’s careful never to look too closely at the number, because knowing means she will unconsciously keep track. 

“I don’t know,” she says, eventually.

“How can you not know? It’s your life!” 

Allura shrugs. “I don’t want to know. The magic takes what it knows I can spare, and what it needs in order to let me keep you, all of you.” She could tell him how it felt to lose the centuries it cost to carry Shiro’s soul, and then she could tell him that she would do it again, and again, no matter how many times she had to, because they are her family. They are the only family she has left. 

“And who will save you, princess?” Lance asks, “when you try too hard to keep one of us?” 

The easy answer is that she will save herself, like she always has, but Allura lets the question hang between them, until Lance turns over their joined hands and looks up at her.

“Guess I–we’ll just have to keep you safe,” he says, so serious for his boyish grin. 

Allura smiles too, and something soft and hopeful blooms in the cage of her ribs. The universe will have to wait a long time to take her, she thinks, even though she gives of herself to it freely, because her Paladins will stand between her and that last dance along a galaxy’s edge. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please come and chat with me about my fic on [tumblr](http://sequencefairy.tumblr.com) or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/warpspeed_chic).


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